Category: Technology

Australia’s government may take a strict stance on ensuring younger users cannot access AI chatbots. Reuters reports that Australian regulators may require app storefronts to block AI services that do not implement age verification for restricting mature content by March 9.

“eSafety will use the full range of our powers where there is non-compliance,” a representative for the commissioner said in a statement to the publication. Those paths could include “action in respect of gatekeeper services such as search engines and app stores that provide key points of access to particular ‌services.”

A review by Reuters found that of 50 leading text-based AI chat services in the region, only nine had introduced or shared plans for age assurance. Eleven services reportedly “had blanket content filters or planned to block all Australians from using their service,” according to the report, leaving a large number that had not taken public action a week ahead of the country’s deadline. Failure to comply could see AI companies face fines of up to A$49.5 million ($35 million).

The question of which parties are responsible for keeping children from accessing potentially harmful content is being debated around the world. In the US, for instance, Apple and Google have been lobbying to have the task delegated to platforms rather than app store operators. The language from the Australian regulators about all stores is hardly definitive at this stage, but given the breadth of its sweeping ban on the use of social media and some highly social digital platforms for citizens under age 16 enacted last year, an aggressive stance seems to align with leaders’ priorities.

The Analogue Pocket handheld retro console has proven to be extremely popular, as initial runs have sold out. The company just announced the system will be back in stock this week, along with the dock accessory. Preorders open up on March 4 at 11AM ET, with shipments going out this June.

That’s the good news. The bad news? The little console is getting slapped with a price increase. It’s shooting up to $240 from the recent price of $220, with the company placing the blame squarely on President Trump’s neverending tariffs. The device is assembled in China and Trump just hit the region with even more tariffs after the Supreme Court struck down the old ones. We love to suddenly pay more for gadgets that have been out in the wild for nearly six years, don’t we folks?

For the uninitiated, the Pocket isn’t an emulation machine. It plays actual Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance cartridges. It also integrates with various Game Boy accessories, like the camera and printer. The console can even handle Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16 and Atari Lynx games, but those require separate adapters.

We praised the Analogue Pocket in our official review, calling it “a clever little thing” that is sure to light up the nostalgia center of your brain. It even made our list of the best handheld consoles, which is notable given competition included stuff like the Steam Deck.

In any event, this drop will likely sell out quickly. We recommend parking a browser on the company website just prior to 11AM ET if you can stomach the new price.

The iPad Air, the middle child in Apple’s tablet lineup, has been upgraded to the M4 chip with increased RAM and… Well, there’s not a whole lot else if I’m being honest. At the very least, the new iPad Air M4 models remain at the same price as the iPad Air M3, with the 11-inch version starting at $599 and the 13-inch at $799. I would give Apple more credit if it had increased the starting storage or added literally anything else.

If you put them side by side, you might not be able to tell the difference, but this upgrade would benefit creatives and professionals more than anything. There’s a significant performance bump from the M3 to the M4, and the increased RAM is doing a lot of work, especially if you’re taking advantage of Apple Intelligence.

If you’re using an M1-powered iPad Air or something even older, though, the new iPad Air M4 should be a compelling upgrade. Pre-orders start at 9:15AM ET on March 4, with the units arriving a week later. We expect full reviews will be published by then. But in the meantime, let’s dive into what the performance gains might look like and what we’re missing out on in this year’s iteration of the iPad Air.

iPad Air M4 vs. iPad Air M3: Performance and battery life

The most significant difference between the two iPad Air generations is their chipsets. The latest iPad Air launches with the M4 chip versus its predecessor’s M3 chip, and it gets a bump in RAM from 8GB to 12GB.

I don’t give much fanfare to incremental chip increases because the performance gain is usually minimal. However, the M4 is up to 30 percent faster than the M3, according to Apple. That might be noticeable to even casual users, especially as the years go on and iPadOS becomes more demanding. For power users, it’ll mean more demanding work like video editing will be noticeably quicker.

For those in need of the fastest internet speeds, the new iPad Air is also equipped with Apple’s N1 chip, which enables Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, the latest connectivity technology. However, I really don’t imagine the average user needing up to 46 gigabits per second of internet speed compared to the iPad M3’s 9.6 Gbps on Wi-Fi 6. If you do, you’re in the tax bracket for an iPad Pro.

Now, despite the increase in speeds, the battery life between the M4 and M3 models remains the same. Apple claims all four models get up to 10 hours of battery life surfing the web on Wi-Fi or watching video (up to 9 hours on cellular). No complaints here.

iPad Air M4 vs. iPad Air M3: Design, display, audio and cameras

For better or worse, we’re not getting any changes in any of these departments, which is why I’m lumping them together.

The iPad Air comes in blue, purple, beige and gray. The 11-inch option measures 9.74 x 7.02 x 0.24 inches and the 13 comes in at 11.04 x 8.46 x 0.24 inches. As their names suggest, they’re both rather light, at 1.01 pounds (1.02 pounds for M4) and 1.36 pounds, respectively. My only wish was that we got new colors that popped a bit more.

Then there’s the displays. All four versions of the iPad Airs sport a Liquid Retina LED display at 264 ppi. The 11-inch supports a 2,360 x 1,640 resolution with a peak brightness of 500 nits, while the 13-inch offers a 2,732 x 2,048 resolution at 600 nits. It would’ve been nice to see an OLED or even Mini-LED panel make its way to the iPad Air, which could’ve made the screen more vivid and vibrant. But it’s more disappointing that we’re stuck at 60Hz unlike the Pro models that offer 120Hz, making their visual experience smoother.

Both products feature landscape stereo speakers. The iPad Air M3’s audio quality couldn’t live up to the iPad Pro, so I doubt the M4 model will.

You won’t catch me taking photos with an iPad, but for those of you who do, the iPad Air M4 features the same 12MP cameras on the front and back as its predecessor.

iPadOS 26, Apple Intelligence and Apple accessories

Nothing huge is happening to iPadOS or the Apple accessories in the iPad Air refresh. The revamped Magic Keyboard from last year still works with these new models, as does the Apple Pencil Pro. iPadOS 26, released last fall, was a major update but will still be familiar enough to anyone who has used an iPad before. The new iPad Air M4 is getting a significant boost in AI processing speeds, though, thanks to its new chip and 50 percent increase in RAM. However, unless you’re an AI power user, you probably won’t notice a difference there.

All that said, if your love language is spreadsheets, the full specs are helpfully laid out below:

iPad Air M4 vs. iPad Air M3: Specs at a glance

Anthropic has made switching to its Claude AI chatbot easier than ever. The company announced a new memory import tool that can extract all of a competing AI chatbot’s memories and context of you into a text prompt that can be fed into Claude.

With Anthropic’s prompt, you can then copy and paste the output into Claude’s memories, and the AI chatbot will pick up where you left off with another AI chatbot, whether it’s ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot. Anthropic said it’ll take about 24 hours for Claude to assimilate the new context, but you’ll be able to see the change by clicking on the “See what Claude learned about you” button. Claude users can even tweak what the AI chatbot remembers in the “Manage memory” section in the app’s settings. Anthropic pointed out that Claude is meant to focus on “work-related topics to enhance its effectiveness as a collaborator,” adding that it might not remember personal details that are unrelated to work.

Anthropic’s timing doesn’t seem to be just a coincidence. Claude recently jumped to the number one spot in the App Store’s free apps charts, dethroning ChatGPT in the process. The rise in popularity likely stems from its recent dispute with the Department of Defense, where Anthropic refused to budge on AI guardrails related to mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons. On the other hand, OpenAI will be taking Anthropic’s vacated role with the Department of Defense, leading to a trend of users boycotting ChatGPT and canceling their subscriptions.

Apple has scheduled a product launch event, dubbed an “Apple Experience”, for March 4 at 9AM ET. The company is reportedly holding this event in NYC, London and Shanghai.

Everyone loves shiny new products, so what can we expect to see at Apple’s first launch event of 2026? We don’t know anything for certain, but we have plenty of educated guesses that have been sourced from industry reports and speculation from analysts.

Editor’s Note (on March 2 at 9:45AM ET): Apple has officially announced the iPhone 17e and iPad Air (M4). It’s expected to continue to unveil new hardware in the following days, per the rest of this article.

Budget-friendly MacBook

There have been rumors swirling that Apple is preparing to launch a cheaper alternative to the MacBook Air. Bloomberg reported on this all the way back in November. Industry rumors indicate that Apple will be stuffing this laptop with an iPhone processor, the A18 Pro, to keep the price down.

It’s also been suggested that this laptop will only include 8GB of RAM, which kind of flies against the company’s recent stance to outfit all Macs with at least 16GB of RAM. However, that would certainly help with the cost. You might have heard about a little thing called AI that chomp chomps on all RAM it can find.

TechRadar has reported that this could be Apple’s biggest laptop launch in years, with potential initial shipments hitting 8 million units. The price is likely to be somewhere in the $699 to $799 range, which is pretty nifty. However, I’d still go for an Air at $999. They are absolute workhorses.

MacBook Pro with M5 Pro and Max chips

It’s likely that Apple will release more powerful MacBook Pro models this year and the timing seems to match up. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has suggested a March launch and the event is on March 4.

The company has already released a MacBook Pro with an M5 chip, but both the M5 Pro and Max are likely on the horizon. We could be getting new laptops outfitted with these chips in various display sizes.

There have also been reports that both of the higher-end M5 chips are getting a redesign to help improve heat dissipation and reduce defective chip rates. Additionally, the new chiplet design would allow the M5 Pro and Max to raise the total number of CPU and GPU cores. The Max is expected to have more cores than the Pro.

This idea is helped along by the fact that MacBook Pro M4 Max orders are currently delayed. This is typically the case with an outgoing model as stock dries up to make room for new releases. Also, the Pro and Max variants typically get announced in the Fall, so we are due.

New iPads

Rumors have been circulating that we are about to get new iPads, including an update to the base model and the Air. The standard model, which would be the 12th-gen release, is expected to upgrade the A16 chip to an A18. This should also allow for the integration of Apple Intelligence tools, if that’s your bag.

As for that iPad Air, rumors suggest an upgrade to the M4 chip from the M3. An extremely light tablet with an M4 would be fairly notable in my estimation, as only the newest iPad Pro has that chip.

iPhone 17e

It was almost exactly a year ago that Apple announced the iPhone 16e, so you know what that means. It’s time for a refresh. Recent reports have suggested that an announcement regarding the iPhone 17e is imminent, so this launch event seems like as good a place as any to reveal the latest “budget-friendly” smartphone.

As for specs, Mark Gurman has suggested that it’ll be getting an upgrade to the A19 chip, which is nice. Also, it could be getting MagSafe support. That sounds like an iterative upgrade, but the price is expected to remain steady at $599.

Other Possibilities

The following stuff is less likely, though certainly possible. There have been rumors that Apple is currently preparing a revamped Studio Display and Mac Studio desktop. The reports suggest a release sometime in the first half of the year, and March is right in the middle of that timeframe.

It’s also possible that the company will reveal an upgrade to the MacBook Air with the M5 chip. Reports indicate that this is unlikely to happen during this event, but it is worth noting that the M4 Air came out in March of last year. In other words, it’s a toss up.

What’s not a toss up? You shouldn’t expect anything regarding the long-anticipated Siri refresh. This looks to be a hardware event, so any software updates will likely have to wait until WWDC this summer. In any event, Engadget will be on hand to report on all of Apple’s new products.

Update, March 2 2026, 9:45AM ET: This story has been updated to add an Editor’s Note with the latest news from Apple this week.

Apple has just announced the addition of the iPhone 17e to its smartphone lineup. This model is kitted with the same A19 chip that powers the base iPhone 17, and it will support the Apple Intelligence suite of AI tools. As the rumors suggested, the iPhone 17e will indeed be priced at $599, same as last year’s iPhone 16e. The base model will come with 256GB of storage, and also be available in a new pink color.

The iPhone 16e was missing a few elements that are now being added to the 17e, most notably MagSafe charging at Qi2 speeds. This means it can charge wirelessly at 15W compared to the 7.5W.

Apple also gave the iPhone 17e its C1X cellular modem, which it said is “up to 2x faster than C1 in iPhone 16e.” This year’s entry-level iPhone also has Ceramic Shield 2 on its 6.1-inch Super Retina display, which Apple says offers “3x better scratch resistance than the previous generation and reduced glare.”

Most of the other specs appear similar to the iPhone 16e, including the 48-megapixel Fusion camera that uses one single hardware sensor to provide two dedicated camera pipelines. It’s not yet clear whether there are specific changes here, but to use Apple’s words in its press release, “[The Fusion camera] also enables an optical-quality 2x Telephoto — like having two cameras in one.”

The iPhone 17e is rated IP68 for dust and water resistance, and will also support Emergency SOS, Roadside Assistance, Messages and Find My via satellite. From the outside, the device looks very similar to its predecessor, with the same shape, notch and buttons as before. We’ll of course have to wait for a review unit and more information to know for sure, but Apple continues to state that the iPhone 17e delivers “all-day battery life,” though adding this time it’s aided by the C1X modem “and the advanced power management of iOS 26.”

Apple unveiled most of its iPhone 17 roster back in September, but its budget models usually are introduced a few months later. We’re also still waiting on the official news of what’s colloquially being calling the iPhone Fold, which is rumored to arrive in the back half of this year.

The iPhone 17e will be available for pre-order on March 4, and will start arriving in stores on March 11.

Samsung’s newest feature turns your phone into your house keys. The company has created the Digital Home Key, a feature inside of the Samsung Wallet that should let you unlock any compatible smart door with your phone. The Samsung Wallet already offered digital car keys.

“As we continue to evolve Samsung Wallet, delivering trusted mobile experiences remains at the core of our innovation,” Woncheol Chai, EVP and head of Digital Wallet Team, Mobile eXperience (MX) Business at Samsung Electronics, said in a statement. “Through close collaboration with our partners and in alignment with the Aliro standard, Digital Home Key brings the same level of security and ease Samsung Galaxy users expect from Samsung Wallet to their homes.”

Created by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), Samsung calls Aliro an “industry-standardized communication protocol.” The Digital Home Key will also get support from smart lock brands like Nuki and Schlage. It’s also designed to meet EAL6+ security certification.

According to Samsung, you’ll also need biometrics or a PIN to use the Digital Home Key. You should be able to remotely manage or remove the tool through Samsung Find if you lose your phone.

Samsung is rolling out the Digital Home Key in select regions starting this month. It plans to expand its range as compatible smart lock brands become available in more locations.

Another major antitrust lawsuit has launched in the UK. This time its against Sony, which could be on the hook for almost £2 billion ($2.7 billion) for overcharging PlayStation users.

A class action case for about 12.2 million users argues that Sony “occupies a dominant position in relation to the digital distribution of PlayStation games and in-game content and that it has been unfairly charging its UK customers too much for digital games and in-game content purchased through the PlayStation Store.”

It argues that Sony “has a near monopoly” on add-on content and digital games through the PlayStation store, allowing it to set the prices and take a 30 percent commission.

The class action encompasses anyone in the UK who owned a PlayStation console and purchased digital games or made in-game purchases through the PlayStation store between August 19, 2016 and February 12, 2026. It’s being run as an opt-out lawsuit, so anyone meeting the criteria can qualify without taking any action. If the lawsuit is successful then each person could receive about £162 ($217).

Sony has argued that allowing downloads from third-party stores could bring security and privacy risks, according to the Financial Times. It further states that the digital sales commission makes up profits lost for selling their consoles with minimal profit.

This lawsuit follows the success of a similar class action decided in October. The UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal found that Apple had been abusing its dominant market position and overcharging App Store users. In December, Apple filed an appeal against the £1.5 billion ($2 billion) fine.

Vivo barely has a presence outside of China but that seems to be changing with the company’s next flagship phone. At Mobile World Conference 2026, the company unveiled the X300 Ultra smartphone that comes with a 200MP telephoto sensor, along with multiple accessories designed for pro photographers and content creators, including a SmallRig video cage and 400mm Zeiss telephoto extender lens.

Vivo didn’t go into detail about the phone’s specs, but you can likely expect a high-end processor, screen, battery and other internal components when it’s fully unveiled later on. Vivo did say that like the X300 Pro, the X300 Ultra will have an impressive 200MP telephoto sensor, and is likely to offer features like 4K 120fps Dolby Vision HDR recording. Vivo’s Daniel Goetz said it couldn’t yet reveal the specs for its primary camera sensor — which will likely be deeply involved with the new device’s push into video.

Another thing Vivo revealed is that you’ll be able to get the Vivo X300 Ultra with a 400mm equivalent lens accessory called the Vivo Zeiss Telephoto Extender Gen 2 Ultra. That will allow about an 8x zoom compared to the native field-of-view, plus much more when combined with the high-quality digital zoom. It will also offer “gimbal-grade” optical image stabilization and motion-tracking focus technology, Vivo says.

The device’s camera mount is part of an ecosystem that remains consistent with the X200 Pro, so the camera automatically reads the connected lens. This means the first-gen telephoto extender will also work with Vivo’s newest flagship. The large 1/1.4-inch telephoto sensor and high megapixel count allow shooting up to 30x zoom (roughly 800mm) while retaining high levels of detail, according to Vivo.

Along with the lens, Vivo is introducing a “pro-grade camera cage” designed by the well-known accessory company SmallRig. It’s expandable and offers multiple cold shoe mounts and quick-release ports so you can easily add things like handles, lights and microphones. It also comes with dedicated physical buttons for tactile shutter and zoom adjustment, plus a multi-level piezo cooling fan to keep the phone running cool. You also get an “External Lens Expansion Frame” to accommodate the X300 Ultra Telephoto Extender. Other SmallRig collaborations include Bluetooth connected gri controllers, which you can see above, mounted on the X300 Pro.

During a brief teaser presentation, we learned a few more details. The telephoto camera will include three degrees of optical image stabilization, and you’ll be able to shoot video in Log with your favorite LUT active in the X300 Ultra’s preview view. The video you record, however, will still be an unedited Log file. Color grading will also be available inside the device.

For videographers, it will also natively support ACES (Academy Color Science), making it easier to fit into professional workflows in DaVinci Resolve or Final Cut Pro without requiring specific color conversion.

Vivo showed off the phone at MWC 2026 in Barcelona to a fair amount of enthusiasm. The company emphasized that the X300 Ultra will be the first device in the series to reach international markets, including all European regions in which it already does business. It didn’t specify the price. The X300 Pro costs about €1,400 in Europe. Availability in the US is still TBC.

The move, Vivo said, “signals Vivo’s more proactive and confident approach to expanding its presence in the global premium smartphone segment.” Given the likely price, though, it’s debatable if pro creators will want to buy this instead of, say, a pretty nice mirrorless camera and lens.